Restored Smackdown X: Your Favorite Century

Wow those coins are REALLY nice Jimbo, amazing!

I prefer 5th, 4th, and 3rd centuries BC. It is not possible to choose one favorite, but since no one has entered any 5th century BC coins yet, I'll make that my entry.

I'd like to have clustered my entries within a decade for 5 bonus points, but that bonus really only applies to Roman era or later since earlier coins are not generally not assignable to a precise and narrow date range. I'd also have liked to get bonus points by posting coins of different empires, but this is not possible for the 5th century BC-- other empires weren't making coins yet! The Mylasan coin may have been minted under Persian rule. The exact political state of my coins' origins is unclear.

Anyway... here's my entry. All are 5th century (archaic and early classical), thematically similar in that all three are tiny fractional silvers featuring animals. The first one is still in transit, weeks after the auction, so I had to use the seller's picture.



Macedon, Pangeion Region
AR trihemitetartemorion (trihemiobol), 5 mm, 0.26 gm
Uncertain mint, 5th century BC
Obv: monkey squatting left
Rev: round shield or pellet within incuse square
Ref: "Uncertain Thraco-Macedonian Coins, Part II", NomKhron 17 (1998), 67

This enigmatic series showing a monkey squatting either right or left with a round shield on the reverse, is the only ancient Greek coin to depict such an animal. Monkeys are known to have been kept as house pets in antiquity, but its significance in this context is unknown.

I have seen a few of these in auctions or archives. They are "extremely rare" and typically very expensive. Because of the usual price tag I didn't think I'd be able to get one. However, this one was offered in a recent Roma auction and amazingly, the bidding didn't go crazy. I am so excited about its impending arrival! Surely it will be here by next week. It appears to have cleared New York and should make it to me by early next week at the latest... I hope.

It will take a place of honor in my collection as my smallest coin. The only way it could be better would be if the monkey had wings, and those only exist in Oz.



IONIA, Klazomenai
AR diobol, 9 mm, 1.18 g
499-494 BC.
Obv: forepart of winged boar left
Rev: incuse square
Ref: Cf. BMC 9-10 (drachm); cf. Traité I 488 (drachm). apparently unpublished as a diobol (no other examples of this denomination with the pigasus flying left)
ex Daniel Koppersmith Collection

Well you all know by now that I am collecting pigasus coins. This tiny beauty was my first and it is my oldest coin. I have half a squadron of pigasi and am actively looking for more. This one, like most winged boar issues, is from Klazomenai. I've seen examples of winged boars on coins from seven other cities and my goal is to buy at least one from each of those. These porcine pretties are hard to find except for Klazomenai issues, so it will be a long hunt. For more information about the legend of the winged Klazomenai pig, click http://www.theoi.com/Ther/HusKlazomenaios.html



CARIA. Mylasa
450-400 BC
AR hemiobol, 9 mm, 0.5 gm
Obv: Facing forepart of lion.
Rev: Scorpion within incuse square.
Ref: SNG von Aulock 7803; Klein 429 (Milet).

Initially I sought out this type thinking I'd give it to my mother, a Scorpio (she likes that kind of astrological stuff and my brother is a Leo, so a twofer). But darn, it's just so tiny that her 81 year old eyes probably couldn't appreciate it. I'll just have to keep it since I wouldn't want her to feel badly about not being able to see it.

My favorite century ...... Hmmmmmmmm.
Let me think for a moment.

Well my favorite century would have to be ....... the best century of course.
Which is why they call it the 1st Century !
If it hadn't been so good it would have called something else.
Like 2nd or 3rd or something.
The best part of the 1st century is that everthing was new and shiny ! And the rules were still being written .........

"It was the best of times ..... it was the wurst of times"



Case in point

AE As DIVVS AVGVSTVS PATER issued by Tiberius AD22-30
Obv. Radiate bust of Augustus left
Rv PROVIDENT S C Altar of the Ara Providentiae Augusti
Sear 1789
11.07 grams 28-9mm





Now as we all know the 'Radiate' bust denotes a particular denomination ...... Unless you are Tiberius and the subject is Divus Augustus Pater ...... then it is whatever the emperor says it is !
In this case it is a copper As

Fast forward 50 years (or so)

Orichalcum Sestertius DIVVS AVGVSTVS PATER issued by Titus
Obv. Augustus radiate (again !) seated left holding patera and sceptre
Rv IMP T CAES DIVI VESP F AVG P M TR P P P COS VIII around S C
SEAR 2579
20.14 grams 33mm





A bit rough around the edges ...... but heck it was cheap !

Closing out that best of centuries I had to decide between the Generalissimo extraordinaire (Trajan) or the Proboscis extraordinaire (Nerva) !

As Nerva gets little fanfare even though he was a very shrewd politician (by adopting Trajan he guaranteed his own safety) I will proceed with him. Besides it follows with this 'Divus' character who seems to have been so popular.

AE As DIVVS AVGVSTVS issued by Nerva
Obv. Bare head of Augustus right
Rv. IMP NERVA CAES AVG REST S C winged thunderbolt
SEAR 3080
10.86 grams 26mm





I was very tempted to include my DIVO AVGVSTO Sestertius issued by Tiberius instead of the As ...... I would have had a better common theme. They would all have been quite 'green'. But as the radiate thing was a subject of recent discussion ...... well two greens and one red.

Sort of a Caesar Salad !

I don't have enough proper ancients (even all the way up to 1453) to post three different coins in any particular century[1] except 4th, and that would've been a somewhat uninteresting Constantius-Valens-Arcadius triple (not something I particularly want to showcase).
As such, I decided to choose a period slightly closer to my typical collecting interests; I'm not yet sure that I'd be able to get photos in time to enter, but just as a nice little teaser, my current chosen triple appears to represent four different "empires" (plus at least one free city).
Again, hope I'll be able to get photos in time; watch this spot watch this thread... which you'd be doing anyway


[1] considering the ridiculous time uncertainty for my Olbian dolphin coin, I suppose it's theoretically possible it was minted as late as 2nd century BC, which together with some fringe but slightly more plausible datings for other coins of mine could've made a triple; it's ridiculously improbable, however, as the Olbian dolphins are almost always dated to much earlier than that, and mine doesn't look particularly late

Darn right as you posted that, I was pestering my mom to take the photos as soon as possible (and ultimately did most of them myself - might be only my opinion but almost seems mine were better).
So the photos are almost ready (they still need to do through the optimiser and the uploader, but that's about it), and if the original deadline still stood I would've posted the entry pretty soon (as in within a hour). Now I'm not even sure I should do it today as opposed to Saturday.

Jan1stMay........ Leave the 4th Century alone! nothing boring about it...

And my actual post


...If this post had a theme, it would've been "the uneasy balance of power on the eve of Thirty Years' War". Or something of that sort (I originally wanted to say "in late 1610s Baltic", but that only applied to two of the three coins involved; though now that I think of it, the version I did use only applies to one).
Anyway, the coins...

Coin #1:





Sigismund III of Poland, solidus (billon?) issued for the free city of Riga, 1615.

In regard to this coin, I just have to add that the balance of power (if there was any) in late 1610s Baltic was a bit uneasy; Riga would be out of Polish hands only six years later.


Coin #2:





Bohemia (Ferdinand II), 1/4 kreuzer, 1622 (I think, but it's a two-year type so the only other possibility is 1621); uniface (I included a tiny blurry photo of the "other side", for completeness).
Supposed to be "silver" (which could mean billon - didn't find any images of that type other than mine), but my coin is about as reddish-brown as it looks like in these photos, which basically screams "copper" (to me anyway); no idea why such a disprepancy.

As for the Thirty Years' War... looking at the Wikipedia description, by 1622, when this coin was minted, the war probably seemed all but over (at least in regard to Bohemia). This didn't turn out to be the case, unfortunately.


Coin #3:





The obverse of this coin claims it was minted in the Russian year [7]113 AM, which corresponds to 1605 AD - early in the reign of False Dmitry.
Meanwhile, the reverse claims (well, is supposed to claim - my example isn't particularly readable) that it is a coin of Vasily (Shuysky), who didn't take the throne until 1606.
Contradiction? Yes. So which of them actually issued this coin? Neither.
The actual attribution: Novgorod mint kopek issued during Swedish occupation of Novgorod, 1615-17.

It's a somewhat funny story. Novgorod already had a well-established mint when the Swedes "conquered" the town in 1611; well, Sweden claimed that by "conquered" they meant "liberated from danger of Polish attacks" (it did make a bit of sense in context - we're talking about the period when a Polish ruler briefly took the Russian throne). Anyway, since the Swedes did in fact plan to use Novgorod as a base to conquer more of Russia (spoiler: it didn't succeed), they started to mint money in there - using whatever local dies (okay, technically hubs) they could find. (They actually started off with a somewhat realistic die pairing, but for some reason switched to this one in 1615; no idea why.)
Meanwhile, the situation in Russia became relatively stable after Michael (Romanov) took the throne in 1613; and while taking Novgorod by force wasn't a likely possibility, the Swedes soon realized that they couldn't gain much more, either. In 1617, a peace treaty was signed, giving Sweden significant areas on the Baltic [most of that would be Russian again within 100 years] but leaving Novgorod with Russia; so the Swedish coin issue in Novgorod stopped that year (as they didn't control the mint anymore).

Gold: Eng
Silver: NumisRob
Bronze: MartiVltori